Anonymous wrote:I can’t wait till you have a daughter as bad as you.
She’s said plenty of awful things but I think that one hits on all the key themes- i suck, she dislikes being my mom, and she wishes me similar negative experiences in my future
Right there with you. She also saved the parenting difficult child books she bought when I was young "because she knew I would need them" She was gleeful when she handed them over. I was a straight A student, never got into trouble, and was gifted in sports and music.
For me, this wasn't the worst thing. But it's hard to pinpoint the worst because it was the thousand tiny paper cuts on a daily basis all colliding to remind me all the ways I wasn't meeting her expectations as the eldest daughter in a large family. That my faults were terrible reflections of her. Lazy, selfish and ungrateful and me being generally person not worthy of any investment or love and kindness were the general themes.
I feel for all the people who have posted here.
Maybe the worst was the fact that after about age 6 or 7 I never smiled in photos and always looked sullen. She always said this was me and my terrible personality - I was negative, intense, brooding. No one ever asked why I never smiled or checked that I was ok. I wasn't ok but no one noticed. Sometimes I see children with this look on their faces today and, while I don't know what is going on in their inner life and am only seeing a brief moment in time, I silently wish them well and hope they can grow up and make it out. To have so much pain you need to dissociate from life with this blank, sad stare is something no child should have to endure.